Pen Pals 2.0: Can Technology Foster Global Tolerance? | Edutopia

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Schools all over the world are using digital tools to help students collaborate and build cultural understanding with distant peers.

“That’s my friend!” students from Lee’s classroom whispered excitedly, referring to the one-on-one relationships they’d built through the Intercultural Virtual Exchange of Classroom Activities (IVECA), a nonprofit organization that helps classrooms connect digitally to other classrooms all over the world.

The program, which Lee said has “opened the eyes” of her students living in rural Vermont, is one of a growing number of others like it that use technology to foster global learning among U.S. students and their international peers. Thanks to today’s technological capabilities, students from Somalia to Alabama no longer wait weeks to receive a mailed letter from a pen pal halfway around the globe: They can see and hear from one another in real time.

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sure, but it wont come easily. “tolerance” is such a weird term– mutual understanding (rather than uniformity or conformity) is what we should be working towards, not just “tolerating” each others differences.

and along the road to mutual understanding is lots of little misunderstandings– hurtles and pitfalls, to get past. hurtles and pitfalls arent the sort of thing most people go looking for, actually. but for meaningful progress theyre unavoidable.